Truly safe?

Comments

"Informal investigations &#151; where weeks or months can go by before potential problems are brought to the public's attention &#151; are becoming more common. And that has ramifications for car buyers, who may not learn the vehicles they own or are considering buying have quietly raised safety concerns at NHTSA and among automakers."

If you read my link, you may have noticed our old friend Sean Kane of SRS being quoted - the outfit that supports trial lawyers that got so much press over Toyota's SUA issues. Over the decades the suits and threats of suits have likely done more for implementing consumer protection stuff like seat belts and air bags than Consumers Union/Consumers Reports or the feds.

Lawsuits over bogus EPA mileage figures have done more than anything to keep the auto makers honest. Now how do we keep the EPA honest? Thankfully that worthless Steven Chu is gone. I think he was sniffing or drinking ethanol.

all ya have ta do in New Mexico ta get your NM driver's license is plunk down yer $33 and smile. No tests, no muss, no fuss. You do have to pass a vision test, though, but as long as you wear your stylish eyeglasses you're fine. That New Mexico driver's license is good for 4 years, though, and I think that's pretty cool.

"Distracted driving is a big issue," Anwyl said, "but I'm not sure that banning technology is the solution."

Anwyl said that consumers so love the feeling of being able to stay connected to their social circle that "it's almost an addiction." As a result, many consumers will end up bringing their devices into their cars &#151; regardless of the rules.

His proposed solution was driver education, not more laws. Anwyl cited a NHTSA statistic: 90 percent of accidents are caused by driver error. He stressed that drivers do not take that fact serious enough, preferring to think that car safety is all about the best technology, crash-test ratings and lots of airbags."

"Safety advocates and two parents who unintentionally hit their children when backing up sued the U.S. Department of Transportation on Wednesday, asking a court to order the agency to promptly issue a safety rule that was mandated by Congress in 2008 to set federal standards on vehicles' rear visibility.

Such systems enable drivers to see whether people or objects are in the blind spot behind vehicles. Safety advocates say that each year more than 200 individuals are killed and 18,000 injured in so-called "backover" crashes." Children under the age of 5 account for 44 percent of the fatalities.

The lawsuit asks the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to direct the DOT to issue a mandatory rule within 90 days."

Dallas County sheriff's deputies traveled to Fort Hood earlier this month and picked up their very own International MaxxPro MRAP. This particular truck has never seen any actual combat, having only been deployed stateside for training exercises, so it doesn't have any cool battle scars, but with the dealer's $600,000 price tag knocked down to nothing, and with just 10,000 miles on it, the deal was too good to pass up.

After making the 160-mile drive back to Dallas from Fort Hood, deputy James Blesoe declared that the vehicle "exceeded expectations,

"Master lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who did time for stretching the influence peddling rules to the breaking point, distilled the practice to its essentials in his 2011 post-prison memoir, "Capitol Punishment." Once he dangled a lobbying job in front of a congressional staffer, he wrote, "I would own him and, consequently, that entire office. No ruled had been broken … but suddenly, every move that staffer made, he made with his future at my firm in mind."

The revolving doors may be well-distributed around Washington, but NHTSA has long been viewed as a particular problem child. In 2001, at the request of Sens. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) and Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), the Department of Transportation's inspector general compiled a list of NHTSA officials who had moved directly between the agency and the auto industry over the previous 27 years.

The list ran to 63 names. Those jumping directly to the industry included four administrators (the top job), two chief counsels and dozens of department heads, engineers and attorneys."

Good point there, oldsters are healthier than ever, so maybe that will help their driving.
We can hope so, as there will be proportionally more oldsters on the road in the near future than ever. It could be a disaster, but might also hasten the move to at least partially autonomous cars.

Those GPS gizmos (pardon me, precision farming systems) have been on tractors since 2000 or so. Some of the fancier systems download sat images of the fields and do the calculation for the fertilizer application and then plug the info into the tractor's guidance system. That enables the tractor to auto steer and spray the right amount where it's needed. So nap away.

I bet the autonomous car developers have been plowing through all the ag studies on this.

"The furor over General Motors Co.’s deadly ignition switch has the potential to doom the antiquated car key, a technology drivers have been using -- and complaining about -- for 65 years.

Push-button start, which showed up in Mercedes models in the late 1990s, is now an option in 72 percent of 2014 cars and trucks in the U.S., according to Edmunds.com. In a survey conducted by auto researcher AutoPacific, consumers ranked the technology the fifth most coveted upgrade for $100 or less "